The White Gown
? Ivy ?
The storm breaks before sunrise. By the time Roman walks me back to the Luna wing, the fortress has already begun preparing for the journey.
Low voices move behind doors. Trunks thud somewhere below.
In the courtyard, stable hands call to one another while guards check straps, blades, and travel cases with the patience of wolves who would rather prepare for an ambush than admit they’re preparing for court.
Roman stops outside my door. The guard on duty keeps her face carefully neutral, though her eyes flick once from my loosened braid to Roman’s rumpled shirt before she looks straight ahead again.
Roman notices, but he doesn’t look embarrassed. That stops my cheeks before they have the chance to burn.
His gaze returns to my face. “Breakfast will be sent up.”
“I can request my own breakfast.”
“I know.”
“That sounded like an order.”
“It was.”
My mouth almost curves.
The small almost-smile between us lasts only a moment before the day we face returns to both of us.
Roman’s expression shifts. “Wear what you choose.”
The warning is too specific to be random.
“What did they send?”
He sees my face and stops. “I don’t know yet.”
Roman’s jaw tightens. “I’ll have Dane check.”
“No. I can look.”
“You can leave it.”
“I know.”
He studies me for a long second, then nods because I said it, not because he likes it.
The door opens when I turn the latch. Warm air touches my face. The bed has been remade while I was gone. A tray sits near the hearth with bread, soft cheese, sliced pears, and tea still steaming faintly. Someone has folded my dark wool gown across the foot of the bed.
For one impossible moment, I want to crawl under the blankets and pretend I don’t have to go back.
Roman remains outside the threshold. The bond is quiet after the kiss, but quiet doesn’t mean absent. It holds him near the edge of my awareness, warm and steady, waiting for me to decide whether I need him.
I don’t ask him in.
“I’ll eat first,” I say.
His face softens in that almost invisible way of his. “Good.”
His eyes hold mine for a heartbeat, and then he turns away.
The guard closes the door after I step inside, and the room becomes mine again.
I eat quickly. The bread tastes like ash for the first few bites. The pears are easier. By the time I drink the tea, my hands have stopped feeling hollow.
Snow clings to the window in uneven streaks, and the courtyard beyond moves in blurred shapes of guards, horses, wheel tracks, and dark coats against white.
Everyone is getting ready to leave.
Eventually, I stand.
The wardrobe is dark wood, polished enough to catch the dim shape of me in its surface. For a second, my reflection looks like a stranger with a loose braid, a night robe, a mark hidden under one sleeve, and a kiss still living on her mouth.
Then I open its door.
A white gown hangs at the front with a fresh palace-laundry tag tied beneath one sleeve.
The room was locked while I was gone, but the gown could’ve arrived with the royal summons before the door was secured.
I turn the tag over. A storage number has been written beneath the palace mark, but it means nothing to me. Someone inside the palace prepared the gown, sent it north with the royal summons, and made certain it was placed in my wardrobe before the room was secured.
For one foolish second, I think it’s the same dress.
But it’s not.
The ceremonial gown I wore north is stored somewhere in the fortress. This one is new, its silk perfect and untouched. Yet the resemblance is unmistakable: the high neckline, pale embroidery, the soft white drape.
Someone has recreated the dress I bled in.
A folded note is pinned to the hanger with a silver clasp.
For the review, propriety may be served best by visual continuity.
A tidy phrase for making me relive the worst moment of my life while pretending it’s normal.
My breathing turns shallow.
The room contracts around the gown. Cloth can’t humiliate me or reject me. It can’t turn a vow chamber into a theater and leave me beneath the moon, vowed to another.
Yet I still hear Marissa’s voice.
Stand straight. Don’t embarrass the family.
The knock comes before I realize I’m crying.
The door opens after a second knock I still don’t answer. I never locked it after Roman left.
“Ivy?” Nora’s voice is less sharp than usual.
I don’t turn. She crosses the room and stops beside me.
“Ivy.”
My laugh comes out thin. “Propriety.”
Nora reads the note, and her face settles into a calm I don’t like.
“May I remove it?”
The question catches me.
“I’ll take it out of the wardrobe.”
My throat tightens. “Yes.”
Nora unhooks the hanger and carries the gown across the room as if it’s contaminated linen. She folds it over the back of a chair without gentleness.
Then she turns back to me. “Breathe.”
I do.
My hands are cold, but steadier than they were.
“Who sent it?” I ask.
“I can guess.”
“Sloane.”
“Or someone who knew what it would do.”
A second knock sounds at the open door.
Nora looks over her shoulder. “No more white gowns.”
A woman in dark work clothes freezes at the threshold with three folded gowns in her arms.
Nora blinks. “That was for the dress.”
The woman looks between us, then at the white gown folded over the chair. Understanding crosses her face.
“I didn’t bring white,” she says.
She’s perhaps fifteen years older than me, with silver in her dark hair and a measuring cord looped around her neck. Behind her, two younger seamstresses wait with solemn faces.
Nora steps aside. “Come in.”
The woman enters and bows her head to me. “Luna. I’m Mairen. Alpha Roman asked that northern options be prepared in case the court garments were unsuitable.”
Roman.
He saw the trap before I opened the wardrobe. He didn’t remove the choice before I could see it. He simply made sure another one was waiting.
Mairen lays the first gown across the bed.
Black wool, fine enough to move softly and heavy enough to hold its shape. Silver thread marks the cuffs and hem in narrow lines that look like frost against stone. It isn’t mourning black. It isn’t hiding black.
It’s northern black, severe and deliberate.
The second gown is moon-blue, almost gray where the fabric folds, with silver clasps along the sleeves. The third is softer black with dark stitching across the bodice that only shines when the light catches it.
I can’t speak for a moment.
Mairen’s voice is careful. “The Alpha said not to dress you for another altar.”
My throat closes. “He said that?”
“His wording was rougher.”
I look at the gowns. They’re not apology. They’re not continuity. They don’t ask me to become the girl the court remembers.
My hand moves toward the black wool before I decide. The fabric is warm under my fingers, strong without being stiff.
“What if they say I’m trying to look like him?” I ask.
Mairen thinks before she answers. “Let them say it.”
My fingers tighten in the fabric.
The mark beneath my sleeve warms.
They call Roman cursed. They call him dangerous. They’ll say he changed me, and they’ll use black as proof.
Maybe it’s proof, but not that he made me into something.
“I don’t want to wear white,” I say.
Nora’s face softens. Mairen nods. “Then you won’t.”
The answer catches behind my eyes.
I choose the first black gown.
The seamstresses move around me with efficient hands. They don’t fuss. They ask before tightening laces. They check the hem. They pin the sleeves where needed and mark the bodice with chalk. Nora sits by the fire and drinks my tea without asking, which is typical Nora behavior.
By the time they finish, I don’t look like the girl who walked toward Jace under the silver arch.
I also don’t look like Sloane, which may be the first mercy.
The gown is plain enough to be strong but beautiful enough to be deliberate. The black deepens my pale skin and makes the silver at my wrists look like moonlight caught on steel. My hair is pinned low with two dark combs. No pearls and no flowers.
I look older. No, that isn’t quite right. I look less arranged. Mairen steps back. “There.” Nora stands without making one of her usual jokes.
That frightens me more than if she did.
“What?” I ask.
Nora’s gaze moves over me. “You look like yourself.”
Mairen adjusts the cuff once more, then steps aside. “The blue can be packed for the second day. The softer black can be held for evening, if the court insists on one.”
Then my gaze drifts to the white gown folded over the chair.
It looks smaller there. It’s still cruel, but it’s smaller.
“Take it away,” I say.
Mairen follows my gaze. “Stored or burned?”
Nora’s face brightens in a deeply alarming way.
I breathe through the first answer that rises.
Burn it.
But the capital understands destruction. It knows what to do with flames. It’ll call me unstable, bitter, influenced, and overwhelmed by the north and Roman’s curse.
I’m tired of giving them the easiest story.
“Store it,” I say.
Nora looks disappointed. Mairen only nods.
I step closer to the gown and pull the note from the hanger. The silver clasp is cold against my fingers.
I fold the note once, twice, and place it on the table beside the royal summons.
“Keep the tag with it,” I say. “Holt may be able to trace the storage number.”
Mairen nods and gathers the gown carefully now, preserving the tag and every fold as evidence. She carries it from the room. The younger seamstresses follow with pins, chalk, and the quiet efficiency of women who know when silence is respect.
I stand in front of the glass.
For a moment, I don’t recognize myself.
The girl in white isn’t gone. I can still feel her in the healed cut on my palm and in the way my body remembers the altar before my mind can argue.